


Keeping Your Word

by AshToSilver



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reform, Batman/Joker Week 2014, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 19:21:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshToSilver/pseuds/AshToSilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This wasn't his first kiss. It wasn't even the most important, life-changing one he'd ever had. But out of all of them, this was the first one that mattered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeping Your Word

**Author's Note:**

> Ohwow, this whole thing sucks and is probably incredibly OOC, but my brain is so fried, I can barely stay awake. xD I honestly just gave up. I think I switched tenses in the latter half. And stop spellchecking.
> 
>  **EDIT Aug/2016:** I have changed my username, I am now going by AshToSilver on AO3 and [my new Tumblr](http://ashtosilver.tumblr.com/)! You can still call me Alex, but I no longer have a day of the week in my name.

It  _sort of_  starts like this.

Maybe... it's Edward or Harley, or  _someone_ , who'd tried to pick their shit back up together. Tried to make a better person of themselves. He'd never given it much thought - less of a try - but this time it's  _different_.

The bat's oddly quiet that night, after the relapse. Joker's still in Arkham, so he gets a front row seat to the walk of shame, as the bat slowly shuffles whoever it was back into the cell nobody even had time to clean.

Joker's the only one awake, so he's the only one who gets to see the devastated, dejected look on the bat's face. And he chooses not to comment because-

Because it's only then that it occurs to him that maybe the bat was actually on their side, in a twisted, round-about way.

It's a strange feeling.

\- - - -

They've got  _something_  and Joker only calls it that because all other suggestions have been shot down. Whatever it is, it's quick and hurried and not all his style. There's always this feeling that they both want more but that isn't possible. He's seen the look on the bat's face, afterwards. Like he wants to do something else but how can they?

The world doesn't make slots for them, where else are they to go, beside back alleys and cold rooftops?

And over time, it trickles away. His crimes get more desperate, the bat's response even more so. They're trying to hold each other's attention like it's the last thing they'll do, but something's just-

"This isn't working." And the bat moans it with absolute despair. "It just- isn't. I'm  _sorry._ "

Joker nods, because he's right. There's a building in pieces, but no bodies. Killing's become pointless, more work, less effect. The bat always comes for him, but the response is the same.

It's been months since anything serious has happened. Joker's lost most of his contacts, most of his men. They hadn't died, they'd just gone to people who'd paid better, done better.

The bat's got one hand on his shoulder, uses it to draw the clown in, embraces, pulls him close, breaths in the scent of a broken world from wind and soot swept hair.

"Could you even just-" And something dies in the bat's throat, but that's never stopped him before. "Try. Reforming. Give it a go."

"The world's not for me, bats." He mumbles in response, but the words sit with him, through the first attempt, the second, the third. All half-assed goes at healing him.

It takes until Arkham's halls are empty and silent, when the world begins to quiet, when the crime rate slowly edges into lower and lower numbers.

It takes until the Joker's forced to admit; he's got nothing left, and everyone else has since moved on to better things.

The fourth time, he  _tries_.

\- - - - 

He never says anything, but the bat catches on anyway. The last kiss he gets in a very long time - the first one in months still - is after a fourth or fifth new session with some new therapist. They're in Arkham, the bat's just pasting through.

The bat holds his face with some sort of trembling sadness. When he draws away, the clown can see - this time, it's final. There's an urge to ask for a do-over, but he decides against it. Probably in bad taste.

"Joker." The bat half-whispers. "This is it. You succeed at this, or we're over. I can't keep doing this."

Joker closes his eyes, sits on the bed and tries to- to keep something inside, because it feels like the world is unraveling, all his king's men falling down and the bat touches his face, his shoulder, so lightly it mostly brings him back.

"If this works." The bat says, and rolls a shoulder in a gesture that isn't quiet a shrug. "If this works, maybe we can try again, with... other masks."

"Maybe." Says the clown, and his knight leaves.

Joker never sees him inside Arkham again.

\- - - -

"Patient J, if we're going to try this and be serious about it, then maybe you should come up with a new name for yourself. Something you can use to craft into a new you."

"I'm pretty terrible with names. Have you seen my aliases?"

"I know. That's why the staff have picked a couple for you. How does Eethen sound? Or Samual? Bruce?"

"... I-"

"Patient J, you can't have anything linking you back to this time. It'll be better if it sounds different from what you normally choose. A clean break, so to speak."

"Those aren't  _me_."

"J, if you don't pick something, we will."

"... Samual's fine."

\- - - -

Harley calls him after six months of not-causing-trouble. She's been out for almost a year - and out of Gotham for almost as long. Joker- _Samual_  doesn't know where, they said it would be better that way.

"I heard you got a new name." She says, and honestly the clown-patient doesn't know where she gets her info. He's barely talked to anyone.

"Yeah." These things are always awkward. He'd never been one for phones, and honestly, that the ex-villain wastes her calls on him is astounding from an administration point alone.

"So what is it?"

"Samual."

"You can do a lot with a name like that." And Joker knows, because he can list half a dozen nicknames off the top of his head.

"It's a wasted opportunity, is what it is." Because nobody's calling him anything but Samual. He hasn't even gotten a Sam.

Harley laughs, but it turns sort of sad.

"You'll do okay." She says, and it sounds terrible.

He doesn't want to do  _okay_.

\- - - -

The day he considers the fact that the whole thing may be  _working_  is the night he wakes up in cold sweats, suddenly one hundred present sure he can't remember the taste of freedom.

It's been almost a year since he's been outside of Arkham. He hasn't been in with the general population for far longer then that. His routine's so regulated that he hasn't had a choice larger then orange or blue jello in months.

It's confining, makes it feel like the walls are closing in around him. So he  _runs_. Gets the door open (there hasn't been guards for a while anyway), gets through the security (hasn't been upgraded for longer), and gets out onto the long road that'll lead him back into Gotham.

The bat gets to him before he's into the city, even at the pace he's tearing along at. He falls down into a heap of gasping breath and muscles screaming from disuse as he sees the shadow move.

"You were doing well." Which just confirms Joker-Samual- _Samual_ 's theory that he's been watching, but not visiting.

"I can't take it." He tries to choke back. "I can't take being locked up. I need to be  _free_."

The bat doesn't say anything for a long time. He steps closer though, comes to couch beside the miserable clown. There's been changes since the last time they saw-kissed-talked, new armour, new ways of moving, even at his age.

"Samual." And even the bat uses it, formal and strange but not unfamiliar at this point. "Even if I let you go into Gotham, you wouldn't be free there either. You wouldn't be able to walk down a street without spreading terror. You couldn't go into a single business without them thinking you were going to rob them. You couldn't see a movie, go to a restaurant, couldn't even stay in a hotel. You'd be a fugitive."

He lets the bat take him as far as the gates, and he walks the rest of the way himself.

"Sorry." He says, at the front desk, as the secretary calls security. He looks out the window, as he's taken away, but the bat's nowhere to be seen.

He's got criminals to catch, supposedly. 

\- - - -

"Samual." His therapist wrings her hands. "The board's been talking with one of the companies that fund Arkham. They're willing to sponsor your rehabilitation. But... well, they've come up with an interesting treatment, and the board's discussed it, and we'd like to try it."

"Um." Samual (he admits it, its just  _easier_  this way) shifts in his seat, tries not to  _panic_  because he's had a lot of strange and painful treatments before, and his new meds are making all his emotions rather raw and close to the surface.

"We think it might be best if you... underwent some physical treatment. To blend into society better. A new life, without that sort of mark following you around, don't you agree?"

It becomes awfully difficult to breath after that, so much that he can't even hear the nurse show up over the roar of his own heart.

\- - - -

He breaks out again, goes all the way to the end of the road and lays in the bushes until the bat shows up.

"Samual." And there's something that's halfway between a sigh and understanding in the bat's voice. "This is a good thing."

"I can't go back from something like that." The patient's voice cracks. He's been laying in the dirt for twenty minutes now, letting the cold earth soak everything out of him. "If I relapsed, I'd just be another criminal, I wouldn't be  _me_."

This time, the bat sits down beside him, lets the clown who's becoming less of a clown every day shake out his worries in the dark.

"I never said sorry." Says the bat, rather awkwardly, somewhat mournfully. "For not catching you that night, when you fell."

"S'okay." He mutters in return. "I'd feel crappy for not stopping me either."

"That's not what I meant." The bat says, and this time, he takes Samual's hand. "You've always been a smart man, one of the most intelligent that I've ever met. I feel sorry that I took away your chance to show the world that properly."

"If I hadn't spent the last eight months in anger management, I'd fucking punch you for making me want to cry." Samual hisses, but the bat just sort of nods, and has the decency not to comment on it if the ex-clown actually does.

\- - - -

There are several long surgeries. They make his skin feel all raw, like it's been peeled off. 

He gets a haircut just before, to cut the last of the green out. He hasn't been naturally green - if that's even a thing - since his hair had grown out the first time after his fall, but he'd been dyeing it since then.

He asks for - and receives - one last full look, in a mirror the morning before he goes under. It's difficult to look at the white skin, the sharp accents, and know they'll all be gone the next time he's fully conscious.

"It won't be that different." He says aloud to his reflection. There's patches of sandy skin along his body, areas where the acid hadn't eaten as hard, or parts where the skin had been damaged, cut off, burned or otherwise removed and had grown back the soft pink it was suppose to be. 

"It won't be that different." Says his therapist as they put on the oxygen mask.

 _It will be_. He thinks, and he knows she thinks that too.

\- - - -

For a long time after that, there is a haze that coats his world. He's not the Joker anymore. He's a man named  _Samual_  who's got blond hair and green eyes, whose skin is a bit too pale but still pretty normal. He lives in a medium security ward, eats in a dining hall and spends afternoons in a rec room with people he doesn't know.

He doesn't have any friends. He doesn't have any allies. His therapist sees him once a day, every day except Sunday. He doesn't have a cell with bars or security cameras - he's got a room with a proper bed and a nightstand with three awful books sitting on it. He doesn't get phone calls anymore.

Nobody talks about his past. He doesn't have a single thing to remind him. They took every single thing he's ever had of the bat, of his life of crime.

It takes them six months to decide he's ready.

\- - - - PART TWO - - - -

There is an apartment. It's a bathroom that's a few inches too small, and one large room that's half-kitchenette, bedroom, dining and living room and office all in one. There's probably twenty suites just like it on this floor alone, and all of them are filled with ex-criminals and ex-patients. He feels marked just staying there, but he's never had a  _space_  of his own, in all his memories.

The bed's not all that comfortable, there isn't much else beside a table with two chairs and a couple of mix and match plates, bowls and mugs. As far as rent goes, his mystery company is paying for everything until he decides to move out.

The sun streams through thin curtains and warms his skin. It's the most foreign feeling in the world.

\- - - -

They get him a job in a coffee shop. As jobs go, it's pretty low on the ladder. He makes half-bad coffee early in the morning when all the patrons are just zombies without a fix, trying to get to work before the sun's even woken up. His coworkers pay him little attention, and only the owner knows anything about his real-former identity.

It's barely minimum wage, but without rent and water and heat and all those other things, it mostly just comes down to food and bus fare. The extra adds up little by little, in a bank account under the name  _Samual Conners._

Buying things is difficult. He can't even remember going into a store and exchanging things for cash before, and spends an awfully long time watching everyone else to make sure he gets it right. He spends an awfully long time watching everyone do everything, just in case.

But barely anyone talks to him. Barely anyone looks at him.

It's the simultaneous curse and blessing of living in Gotham City. Nobody cares here.

\- - - -

He figures out the bat is checking in on him after a week or two of living there. A couple of things shift during the night, if he leaves them out. Sometimes he wakes up to discover the dishes have been moved into the sink, or his work clothes laid out instead of bunched on the floor. He's half attempted to leave a note - a joke about elves and shoes comes to mind - but decides to switch it up for food instead.

If the sandwich is gone in the morning, he certainly doesn't smile.

\- - - -

It takes less then a month for things to get interesting. He's minding his own business on an early morning shift, the only other employee fooling around somewhere else, when a rather tired-looking businessman rolls in.

The man, dressed in a  _very_  expensive suit with the buttons done up wrong and the silk tie a bit too loose, scans the chooses with a look implying nothing's actually reaching the important, decision part of his brain.

 _Damn_. Mutters the part of Samual that is actually thinking.  _He's hot._

 _Shut up, shut up_. He chants and tries to paste something that doesn't resemble his old smile on his face. It'd taken him a while to perfect that one.

The man seems to take note, and suddenly smiles back, a grin that turns flirtatious as he really looks.

"Well, well. Are all the employees are handsome as you?" He purrs, in a voice so rich and warm it sends shivers down Samual's spine.

"Nope." Comes out of him before he can stop himself and remember  _No Jokes_. "Everyone else is hideous, second heads and fifth limbs and all that."

The man laughs, in a deep, rich tone that makes Samual  _very_  glad he's standing behind a counter. He leans closer, that come hither look still sprawling itself so effectually across his features.

"So," he purrs. "From the only good looking employee in the store - what are your official recommendations?"

"Well, the scones probably won't kill you." And it's so  _easy_ , after so long, to be funny and charming and why had he  _ever_  stopped? "And if you like hazelnut, I can make some coffee that isn't doesn't taste like we imported it from a gas station."

"I'll take that." The man pulls out a fifty and slides it across the counter in a move that manages to look sexual, despite it's innocence. "Keep the change. Actually, on the topic; I wouldn't mind your number either."

Something inside Samual sort of stutters, and he thinks something must have shown on his face, because the man rocks back on his heels a bit, like he gets he overstepped his boundaries.

"I don't have a phone number." He explains awkwardly, welcomes the chance to turn around and pour and mix and not-look-at-him.

"Pity." The man muses, when Samual hands over his breakfast. "Guess I'll have to come back then, huh?" He smiles, that same handsome grin that looks like it could make people swoon if he turned it up a notch. "See you, Sammy."

 _Sammy_. He's had another name for almost two years.  _Samual Conners_ , mental outpatient. But nobody's ever called him anything beside Samual. And he'd picked it because you  _could_.

There's something inside of him that's threaten to break, but thankfully it goes away when his coworker makes a strangled noise behind him.

"That was  _Bruce Wayne_." She whimpers. And suddenly there's a whole other thing to worry about.

He'd just been hit on by the richest man in Gotham. No way that could end badly.

\- - - -

Wayne -  _Bruce,_ because that's what he insists on, comes in every day for weeks and it takes about that long for Samual to not freak out every time he gets directly talked to. In his defence, he hasn't had a non-therapy or non-employement related discussion since... well, honestly he can't remember.

But Bruce is... easy. Somehow he always ends up reacting in a way that's never too difficult or too strong against all of the confusing nerve endings of the new system Samual was still trying to figure out.

It's nice, if he can ignore the fact that Bruce drops more money on dinner then he makes in a month, or that he's pretty sure he's kidnapped or at least held the man hostage a few times.

His coworkers have a habit of hiding around the corner when they think he's going to show up, as if attempting to talk to the man will prove disastrous. Once or twice they tried to take pictures, at least until Samual threw some empty paper cups at them.

It was this audience, that witnessed Bruce ask Samual out on a day, and the resulting panic attack.

"You don't have to if you don't want to." Bruce says, as Samual wheezed on the floor. "Seriously Sammy, you can say no."

"I just haven't..." The ex-criminal waved his arms around a bit to illustrate his point. "Done the date thing."

"... Done the date thing." Repeated Bruce, like he was trying to rework the phrasing in his head. "As in you haven't gone on a date before?"

There was a motion that could have been shivers or a nod. Bruce just smiled and rubbed a hand down Samual's arm in something akin to a comforting motion. "Seriously, its not that big of a deal, I can just pick you up for dinner and that'll be all."

Samual made a noise that could have been mistaken for the last gasps of a strangulation victim, but nodded.

Bruce smiled even brighter. "Is four tonight okay?"

\- - - -

It did so happen that Samual - Sam, because that was what Bruce called him and he'd gotten awfully used to using the names people used for him - owned at least one set of dress clothes, the ones they'd made him wear to board meetings, hearings and trials.

Bruce met him in front of the store with a large grin and a private car. Sam spent most of the trip trying to remember what his therapist had said about forming relationships with people, before remembering as the car pulled up to a modest, private looking place that she'd recommended he didn't build any until they approved it.

But if Bruce noticed his nerves, he didn't comment, and simply swept his date inside with a hand on the small of Samual's back. They were greeted, then seated and then left alone.

It had suddenly occured to the ex-clown that this was a very bad idea.

"Why are you even doing this?" He choked out after drinks had been served. Bruce gave him an amused expression over his wine glass.

"Not every day I meet a smart person's that into me." The billionaire said with a smile. "Let alone one that'll go out with me."

 _You've always been a smart man, one of the most intelligent that I've ever met._ The bat whispers in his head.

"I'm not who you think I am." He says, before he can stop it, and Bruce goes silent at the words.

"Would you believe me, if I said I wasn't either?" The man said, and something about the way it comes across - something in the shift of his shoulders, the darkening of his eyes, makes Samual nod his head in agreement.

Bruce reached across the table, grabbed his hand and squeezed it. The dark look was still there, but the ex-clown could see him trying to push it away.

"Maybe, we can just-"  _Forget about it_ was weighing on his tonuge, but he never got the chance, because someone  _screamed_ across the room, and they were both up before they even noticed it, only to sit back down as a man pointed a gun at their table.

"Nobody move." The man hissed, and Samual could see at least a half-dozen more like him around the room. "Wallets, cash, everything on the table."

"This is the last time I take a dinner recommendation." Bruce says, trying to lace some sort of humour or agorrence or something that wasn't quite working into his tone. But he put down his things anyway.

"You too." The man waved the gun at Sam. "Out with it."

"I haven't got anything on me." He explains, pats his jacket to show.

"Liar!" And then the gun's against his temple, and he feels split in two - halfway between something akin to terror because he doesn't want to  _die_ after all that work, and halfway into some hardened shell, his former life scratching at the barrier he'd put up, begging to come out.

"I swear, I don't have anything." He whispers, and sees Bruce roll back and forth in his seat. There's an intense gaze on his face, and the longer Samual sees it, the stranger it gets. It looks like something's slipping, like he's trying to  _pretend_.

There's something very fimilar about it.

"Sammy." And there's a tone in Bruce's voice Samual's not heard before, except he  _has_ , he can feel it settling into an old, unused part of his head. "Remember what we just said, about you believing me?"

"Sure." Samual croaked. The man pulls the hammer back with a click. He closes his eyes.

"Cash. Now."

"I'm sorry." Comes the whisper, and it's one he  _regonizes._ He knows that voice like he knows his own and-

He opens his eyes. The bat, glad so cleverly in his billionaire skin, strikes.

There's the yelp as the man hits the floor, but Samual can barely hear it, because his head's floated with a hundred images, from a hundred sources, and the height's right, the stance, the  _eyes_ , everything is right.

Somewhere, someone else yells and there's the sound of  _police_ and  _put your guns down, now_ but Samual's very busy not hearing it, because before him is-

"I'm sorry." Bruce's hands are gentle against either side of his face. "I never meant to deceive you, I just... couldn't. I didn't know what to tell you, in the end. Please don't... hate me for this."

"I can't hate you." And this Samual knows better then anything. "I couldn't ever hate you. You kept your promise."

"I did?" And the bat sure looks confused there, almost as confused and conflicted looking as the ex-clown feels.

"You said, if I tried to reform myself, that we could try again." And these are words so old in his head, from a lifetime before, but not all that long in the grand span of time.

Bruce's face breaks out in a grin, as he remembers. "I did say that."

And then he's  _kissing_ Samual. For the first time in a long time. For the first time in these strange bodies they insisted on keeping.

This wasn't his first kiss. It wasn't even the most important, life-changing one he'd ever had. But out of all of them, this was the first one that mattered.

**Author's Note:**

> I thought changing the Joker's name wouldn't sound as awful as it ended up doing, but idk how it turned out. I didn't take enough time to set it up properly, I think.


End file.
